Secondhand
by LovelyLytton
Summary: His new flatmate is more than a little weird. Also, she's a girl. UPDATE: now with two sequel chapters.
1. Secondhand

**Secondhand**

…_but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely._  
_Sula, _Toni Morrison

* * *

Problem was, he hated dogs. And cats. And hamsters, don't even get him started on hamsters. Greedy little fuckers. They never eat all the crap they stuff into their cheeks, and at night, they chew on the bars of their cages and make a hell of a lot of noise. His sister had one, once. Didn't live long. Bummer. He grins, and revels in the knowledge that now that he no longer lives at home, he will never have to bother with pets again.

And in walks his new flatmate, a hamster cage under one arm, a basket with a cat under the other, and just as his jaw drops, a Pekingese trails after her heels.

"Hi, I'm Mina," she says, and beams.

* * *

He commuted to college in his first year, an hour long bus ride each way. Then he'd finally had enough, and moved out. He had some money saved, and taken a job as a night guard in the pathology department of the adjoining medical faculty. He didn't mind the dead, at least they were silent. But even with his savings, and the money from the job, he had to take a flatmate to be able to afford the tiny house. It was almost derelict, had no central heating, and the lock of the backdoor didn't work, but for Joe, it was heaven. Bliss. Solitude. Freedom. Or at least it was supposed to be.

"Mina," she says again, slower this time, and he frowns. "You didn't say you had pets." She giggles. Lord help me, he thinks. This is a taller version of my little sister. "Lots of people don't like pets, so I didn't mention them. But don't worry, they'll grow on you." The cat climbs out of its basket. It's white, and immediately lets out a feral hiss. She tuts and picks it up, cradling the demon to her chest. "This is Artie." She nods her head in the direction of the dog. "That's Robbie, and this is Legolas."  
"You have got to be kidding me."  
"Why?" She fastens her big blue eyes on him, and blinks. Yep, exactly like his sister.

* * *

Joe wants to be a pathologist someday. Seems like a good career. People always die, and as an undertaker, he'd be more concerned with the living, the leftovers, as his uncle Bob calls them. His family has run a funeral home for five generations, so really, it's not as if being normal was ever an option.

The other students picked up on his oddness before Welcome Week was over, and he's been alone pretty much since. It's no biggie, it really isn't. They just don't get his humour, and that's fine. He doesn't mind being alone. Well, not much. He still wishes Zach wouldn't have moved away to bask in the glory of Ivy League, but what can you do, his best friend has always been a genius. And they skype, and play WoW together online whenever they have time. Last time they spoke, Zach literally fell out of his chair to roll around on the floor laughing when Joe told him about Mina and her menagerie. Zach knows how much Joe hates pets, and he also knows that Una's hamster didn't die as much as it was set free in the garden. In the middle of January.

Mina isn't a freshman, she's a transfer student. She used to go to Brown (more Ivy, Joe thinks and snorts), but apparently, didn't like it there and moved. Nobody ever calls for her, and since she set up her computer in the living room, Joe also knows that she doesn't ever skype with anyone. She also doesn't bring a ton of girly girls over to braid hair with or something, which marks a difference from his sister. Three weeks into them living together, the fridge suddenly starts filling up with carrot cake, brownies, and bagels, all wrapped in Starbucks napkins.

"Got a new job?" he asks, and sidesteps the cat.  
"Uh huh," she yawns in response, and takes the coffee mug out of his hands. "This was for me," he grumbles, and returns back to the counter to pour himself a new one. Mina doesn't apologise. He's noticed that she doesn't do it on principle, not even when she clogged the downstairs toilet with her tampons.  
"Help yourself to the bagels and cakes," she says, and yawns some more. Noticeably less bright today, Joe thinks, and sits down at the table too. His Ma raised him right, so even if people generally think he's a crazy dick, he knows how to make conversation and how to behave around ladies. He just doesn't want to do it very often. He's also not sure that Mina really is a lady. Still, he tries to be polite. "How do you like the college?" Braiding her long blonde hair (he found out on day two that the girl sheds way more than her pets), Mina gives a tiny shrug. "It's okay." He doesn't even know what her major is, he realises. Actually, he doesn't know a damn thing about her other that her pets are house-trained (a small bliss) and that Legolas the Hamster is the noisiest animal in the world. Perhaps it's time for a little Q and A. He figures he should start with the easy stuff.

"Miss you friends from Brown?"

She just stares at him for a moment before walking out. She slams the kitchen door behind her and a bit of paint rains down from the ceiling.

Huh. He didn't see that one coming.

* * *

"So, she's kinda weird," he concludes, and in the window on his computer screen, Zach nods pensively. They have googled Mina, and found plenty of pictures of a laughing, beaming girl on the homepage of Brown's Drama Department, always wrapped around people, receiving kisses and holding hands and looking for all intents and purpose like a runner-up to some sort of stupid casting show.  
"So this girl moves to Fort Collins, goes from uber-popular cheerleader type to social outcast, owns a hamster named Legolas and hangs out with you..." Zach's voice trails off and after a minute or so, he adds "weird" for good measure.

Joe grins and takes a bite of pizza, careful to munch right into the microphone. "You're friends with me. You should understand the appeal." Zach tries to keep his face straight, but fails. "Dude, you and me, we were the only people in the whole town who don't like to do crazy, life-threatening stuff outside. Like ski, or something." There is truth in that, but Joe knows that there is no way in which he and Zach could not have been friends. They grew up on the same street in a suburb of Loveland, shared their Ninja Turtle action figures, snuck glances at the dead people in the basement of Joe's house, and once painted ol' Mr. Hancock's toenails after the man had passed away and the funeral home was just about to fill up with his relatives. Good thing Joe's mother never found about that, she'd have probably tossed the both of them in the grave alongside poor old Mr. Hancock.

"So how's Yale?" Joe asks, and Zach makes a face.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Joe is once again reminded of the reason for hating all animals that ever lived. The essay (an unfinished mess) looms on his computer screen and the deadline on the horizon. The problem is that he just can't focus because of all the noise coming through the thin wall from Mina's room.

Joe takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore it. _The three most common causes of death in the United Stares are- _his hands stop moving over the keyboard, and the rest of his thinly stretched patience disappears. Shooting out of his desk, he bangs his fist against the wall.

"MINA, MAKE THAT DAMN HAMSTER STOP CHEWING ON THE BARS OF HIS CAGE OR I WILL FLUSH IT DOWN THE FUCKING TOILET!"

Predictably, Legolas is unimpressed, Mina still asleep, and Joe ends up writing the essay in the kitchen, where it's not much quieter. He goes and buys himself some top of the line earplugs the very next day.

When his professor hands him his essay back with a grin, and says that it was a very funny first sentence, but unfortunately, not entirely accurate, Joe just sinks his head on head on the desk and bemoans his harsh fate. He tapes the essay (an offensive C-) on Mina's door, highlighting the first sentence with yellow marker.

"The three most common causes of death in the United States are heart diseases, cancer, and hamsters." Secretly, Joe thinks that he's probably right.

* * *

When November inches closer (this town always seems to skip autumn and jump right into bone-freezing, teeth-chattering winter), Mina and Joe spent more and more time together. No heating didn't seem so bad when he moved in in summer, but now he finds himself glad for Mina and her menagerie, and dog, cat, girl, and boy often huddle close together on the couch, watching whatever is on TV. They bond over America's Next Top Model (Joe swears it's just for the hot girls, not the actual modeling and emotions and crap), Monster Trucks, re-runs of Quincy, and Letterman, whom they both love as much as they find Kimmel annoying, which is to say, a lot.

Joe has learned that Brown is no-go, and doesn't mention it again. The same goes for her family, friends, and eating habits. Seriously, don't mention five portions of fruit a day. She'll tear you a new one. Like everything else, Joe has learned this the hard way. She's a weird girl, really weird, and really untidy, but Joe doesn't mind, at least not too much. He hides his toothbrush and a few clean plates in a drawer of his desk, and ignores the girly stuff spreading out everywhere. If things get to messy, he simply takes a broom and sweeps all her crap right in front of her bedroom door and then the door will open, swallow it all up, and spew it out again a few days later.

Right now, he can one of her bras draped over the television antenna, and her empty backpack on the fridge. The rest of her belongings are scattered all over the ugly flower print carpet she insisted on putting between couch and TV. Time for the ol' broom, he thinks, but doesn't move. It's too cold. Beside him, Mina huddles deeper into the blankets. Her icy feet are pressed to his sweatpant-clad legs. Man, if he wanted that, he'd go and find himself a girlfriend. "Maybe we should look into moving," he says. She nods, and that's that.

* * *

They start looking for a new place the next morning, but there's simply nothing there, especially nothing that would allow "your three fucking pets," as Joe puts it right before he kicks against the overflowing rubbish bin.  
"You could find a new roommate, I'd understand", she says in a little voice, and damn, if that's not a bit of an apology for the inconvenience, he doesn't know what is. "'S not what I meant, stupid," he mutters, and picks up the phone again. Only one way out of this cold, cold mess.

"Hey Ma, can you check whether any of your customers vacated houses in my price range?"

* * *

They move three days later. He thinks his mother might have pulled a few strings with the heirs to the estate of the poor sod who died, and Joe resolves to get his mother a really good gift for Christmas.

The house is in a neighbourhood full of old people (go figure) in Loveland (his mother is ecstatic), not Fort Collins (Joe is not), they have to drive forty minutes to college, but the central heating is the very best thing in the whole wide world. They build two snowmen in their yard. Robbie's pissed on both within the hour. The rent is a joke, but one they laugh about every day. The two-storey house has wallpapers that look as if they've been on the walls for a century (which makes sense, given that the previous owner died aged 102), but Mina brings home promotional poster from work, and suddenly, everywhere Joe looks, he finds finds stylised mugs and cakes and frappucinos and that damn mermaid with two tails. There could be worse things to look at, but he adds some Foo Fighters posters from his old room back at his parents'.

The best thing apart from the central heating is the fact that they have two bathrooms. Mina of course claims the bigger one because it has a tub. That means that Joe has the downstairs bathroom, which is tiny, and windowless, but it's his own and he doesn't have to extract a disgusting ball of long blonde hair from the shower drain every other day, so he's secretly quite happy with the arrangement. The hair and the animals are the only two things that really bug him about his roomie.

Because the house was certainly not intended for inhabitating only two college students and three pets, they even have two spare bedrooms (tiny, but spare). Joe immediately declares that one is for Zach when he comes to visit. The cat claims the other one, and they just leave the window open so that Artie can come and go as he likes. Once there is no more litter box (because now there is a garden), and the hamster moves into the living room where Legolas can be as loud as he wants to without pissing of Joe in his bedroom, Joe doesn't really mind the animals so much, which means he now doesn't mind Mina at all.

* * *

Because Joe doesn't have a car, Mina drives him everywhere. Because Mina drives him everywhere, Joe's mother brings a huge meatloaf once a week, and cake every other Sunday. They don't have the heart to tell her that the cake is really not necessary because of all the food Mina brings home from the café, but it's a nice gesture, and maybe Joe missed his mother, just a bit.

* * *

One Sunday shortly before Christmas, another blonde bursts into the house and coos over the pets and flushes her tampons down the toilet even though there is a bin with a very crude but instructive drawing right next to it (turns out that just because Mina now has her own bathroom, she doesn't refrain from using Joe's).  
Joe turns beet-red, and by the time Mina comes home, she finds her roommate and a girl shouting at each other at the top of their voices. "Umm, hi," she says, and waves, and the two squabblers fall silent.

The girl is maybe a year younger than the two of them, but her eyes are the same blue as Joe's, and their ears look pretty identical too. "Hey, you must be Joe's sister," she surmises, and smiles. Mina didn't get into into Brown for nothing.

The girl's face splits up in a smile that can only be described as radiant, and she hurries over and immediately hugs Minal. "Yeah, I am, I'm Una, nice to meet you. Ma told me so much about you!"  
Joe glares holes into his sister's back and shakes his head angrily."No, not nice to meet you because Una here is leaving _right about now_."  
"Joey, don't make me call Ma cause you know I will."  
Joe's jaw drops. "What are you, five?" "No, smart," Una fires back, and Mina pulls a chair closer. This is going to be interesting, she thinks, and begins to munch on a leftover pastrami bagel.

* * *

On campus, they don't really spend much time together. Different majors, different libraries, and different schedules. But whenever he does see her, which is rare enough, she is always alone. Doesn't make much sense, Joe thinks. Mina is funny enough, and quite generous, and also pretty. In his experience, that usually makes girls popular. And it's not as if she's shy, she talks his ears off half the time.

The last day before the winter break, he is waiting for her in the parking lot, leaning against her old red Volkswagen convertible. Mina is a bit late, and it's really cold, and Joe forgot his gloves somewhere, so he slips his hands into the sleeves of his anorak and jumps on the spot, up and down, and up and down. His breath comes out as misty white clouds, and he hopes she's not going to be much longer.

When she finally hurries towards him, he can see a boy wistfully staring after her. He's tall and attractive and just the kind of guy he'd expect Mina to be with, looks-wise. "You got an admirer," he says, and she opens her door first and then tosses him the keys. He opens the door on the passenger side, slips in, and gives her the keys back. They move with practised ease, and Joe sinks back into the seat. The backseats are littered with empty paper mugs, chocolate bar wrappers, notebooks, textbooks, lipgloss, and empty can of hairspray, and who knows what else. Only the area around the passenger seat is clean because Joe refuses to ride to and fro in a pile of trash.

The guy walks past their car and tries to catch Mina's eye, but she busies herself with the ignition. "Not your type?" Mina shrugs, and backs out of the parking slot. "I'm here to study, not make friends. I just want to graduate and get out of here." Once they hit Cleveland Avenue, Mina relaxes, fishes a chocolate bar out of the never used ashtray of the car, and takes a bite. "Hey, wanna watch a movie tonight? Your choice."  
"Yeah, sure," Joe says, and thinks that watching movies is making friends, and that Mina is full of shit. Wisely, he doesn't say so. The woman is driving after all.

* * *

They are decorating their Christmas tree. They only have the decorations his family no longer uses, meaning the ugly and the broken ones, but it's his very own Christmas tree, so Joe doesn't mind. By the look of things, neither does Mina. She's wearing a faded red sweater with a smiling snowman, and has a Santa hat perched on her head.

"You going home for the holidays?" Joe asks as he fastens a pink Barbie bauble to the tree. Mina shakes her head. Well, at least she didn't storm out this time, Joe thinks, and snaps his fingers at her. "Christmas Elf, pass me the next bauble." Mina giggles, and reaches into the battered cardboard box to produce a maroon object of indefinable shape. "What on earth is this?" Joe snatches it out of her hand. "A clay reindeer, what else." He made it for his Grandma Smith in kindergarten, and since she passed away three years ago, she must have kept it until then and his Ma didn't throw it out after. He swallows and fastens the reindeer to the last free branch.

By the time the box is empty and Joe has climbed down the small stepladder, Mina is gazing at their tree with shimmering eyes. He knows what this is about: nobody wants be lonely on Christmas. Where on earth are her folks? And then it dawns on him. Thanksgiving came and went without Mina going anywhere, all the while he was with his family, stuffing his face with turkey. Aw, crap, Joe thinks.

"Mina, I hope you're not crying because you don't know what to get me for Christmas. I'm happy with a handwritten promise that you clean up after yourself once a month. But for my Ma, you better go get some perfume or something. Una likes everything pink, or at least she did when she was five. For my Dad and Uncle Bob, we gotta go shopping together. And I'm sure you can find something for Grandma and Grandpa Wilson. I usually get them gift vouchers for the steakhouse round the corner."

Mina quickly wipes the tears away and tries to fake a smile. Pathetic, Joe thinks. "Why would I get your whole family presents?"

"Because it's rude to come to Christmas dinner, breakfast, and lunch without," he answers, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and leaves the room.

* * *

Mina fits right in. She is sitting between Uncle Bob and Grandpa Wilson, and jokes with Una, and eats everything his mother puts in front of her, even the vegetables, and when she laughs, he thinks that this is actually the best present he could've given her. Bummer he already forked out thirty bucks for a waffle iron.

Zach joins them on the morning of Christmas day: he has his own stocking after all. He and Mina get on like a house on fire, and it's not long before they all find themselves on the living room floor, chunky controllers in hand, and battling it out on the old Nintendo 64.

* * *

Joe comes home from the New Year's Eve shift at the pathology (they pay double on major holidays), and finds his roomie sobbing on the floor. She holds a crumbled letter in her hands, and the beasts are draped around her like living blankets.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she says, and then starts to cry in earnest. Oh crap.  
"Want me to call Una?" Joe asks immediately, and shuffles his feet. For all his curiosity about Mina's past, he doesn't want no part of a crying girl on his living room carpet. _Especially_if the carpet is pink and flowery.

His hand is at the phone before she can mumble yes, and by the time Una arrives, dressed in a sparkly golden party dress, a pink anorak and snowboots, the two of them are sitting on the floor together, and Joe strokes Mina's hair.

* * *

"So, what's the deal with the two of you?" Zach asks, as they load up his battered station wagon. Time to return to the world of the rich and smart. He'd rather stay home.  
"She's my friend, I think," Joe says, and secretly puts a paper bag with the Nintendo 64 in the trunk. Late Christmas gift. He got the impression that Zach was kind of lonely at college, and he doesn't have an annoying sister or dirty roomie with a bazillion pets to keep him company.  
"Is she your friend like me, or is she your _special_ friend?" The emphasis on special makes Joe wince.  
"She's my friend like you. Only she has better hair. Look, it's freezing out here. Are you packed up yet?"  
Zach shakes his head, and grins. "Yeah." They embrace in a quick and manly fashion, and then they joke about Una's stupid hair style, and Grandpa Wilson's silent but deadly farts.

Joe watches the station wagon drive away, and stands rooted on the icy street, hands in his pockets, smile straining against his skin until it hurts.

* * *

Apparently, having seen her crying has broken some sort of barrier in their relationship, or maybe it was the Wilson family Christmas extravaganza, who knows, but things change in the new year. Mina tries to clean up after herself, and they make sure to have a daily meal together. That means that they post their work and class schedules on the fridge, and Joe kind of likes it. He buys some Spongebob magnets, and Mina adds some alphabet ones. Soon, Spongebob exclaims "buy chese" on their fridge. They don't have enough e's.

Una comes by more often than not, and it's no longer unusual to find Joe, his sister, and Mina watching America's Next Topmodel or Monstertrucks together. Una even takes to braiding Mina's hair, and vice versa, which restores the image Joe has of how girls normally behave.

One morning in late February, as he's just getting home from work and she's just finishing breakfast before heading out, Mina puts down her spoon a little too forcefully and gives him an inquisitive look. She has splattered milk over half the table, tiny little white drops on the used wood. Of course, she makes no move to wipe them away.

"Why do you want to be a pathologist, when you could be an excellent living people doctor?" She does that sometimes: asking really uncomfortable questions without preamble or apology. Joe thinks it's a bit cheeky. It also reminds him of Zach, which definitely works in Mina's favour.

Joe bites into his peanut butter jelly sandwich, chews, and answers with his mouth still full. "I'm not exactly a living people person. I don't think I'm a people person period, but the dead won't care about that when I cut them open."  
She squints at him, and looks very discontent. "That's stupid. You could have more friends, if you only made an effort."  
Not really the thing he likes to talk about at six in the morning, his loner ways. Feeling put on the spot (his Ma always says that he has a bit of a temper), Joe gives a little shrug. "I didn't notice you bringing home many people."

He realises a little too late that that was more than a little unkind, and tries to soften the blow with a kick against her shin. She pales, but keeps sitting. "And what's wrong with that?" Unlike him, she doesn't sound defensive, just sad. For what feels like the longest time, he watches her stare at her cereal as if it's a bottomless pit of all things horrible. Just goes to prove his point: he's not a people person.

But then, at 6:00 in the morning in his kitchen, with milk stains on the table, and a soggy sandwich in hand, Joe comes to a startling revelation. Mina isn't just people, she's his friend, and he is hers, and friends tell friends the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. Time to man up, he thinks, and voices what he only discussed with his Ma and Zach and Una because he had to talk to someone, didn't he? He takes a deep breath, the kind one takes before jumping off a cliff into the ocean, not that he's ever done that. But he imagines that it would feel the same: daring, scary, new.

"You like people. You like old people, young people, animals, my sister, me, Zach. Hell, my Grandma invited you to tea and you went and had a blast!" Mina plays with her cereal, scooping it up on her spoon and then submerging it in the milk again. She doesn't meet his eyes, and Joe feels like shit (brave shit, but shit) when he continues.

"You're a people person. But you try to pretend that you're not and that's what's stupid, not me." He thinks of the countless pictures of a very sociable Mina on the Drama Department homepage and then of how here, he is the only person she ever spends time with. Well, other than his family. He knows that if if she let herself, she'd be surrounded by an army of friends, one chummier than the next. He puts his sandwich down, and tries to give Mina what he thinks is a reassuring smile. "It's fine, not having plenty of friends. Quality over quantity, you know. I'm picky. You can be picky too. Just stop hiding."

Mina doesn't answer, but her chin wobbles a bit, and damn it, her eyes get all... wet. It's time to shut up now because otherwise, she'll cry, and he'll have to call Una, and his sister is not exactly a morning person and she'll chew him out for making Mina cry, even though he only meant well. So they'll talk about the whole thing later, much later, later as in maybe never because Joe doesn't fear many things, but he fears girly tears.

Mina continues to wobble, but also chucks milk-soaked Corn Pops at him. Joe thinks that's an improvement. After a while, she gives him a tiny, absolutely tiny smile and looks a bit mushy.  
"So you picked me?" she asks and Joe swallows, throat a bit dry (must be some stray bite of his sandwich) and then shakes his head.  
"Na, I picked Legolas."

And then he grins, and she grins, and in his cage in the living room, Legolas the hamster merrily chews on the pink bra Mina has tossed on the top of his cage yesterday.

*** **The End** ***


	2. Homesick

**Homesick**

* * *

Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.  
_Beloved_, Toni Morrison

* * *

"Oh, by the way, Una is moving into the free bedroom upstairs."  
Joe laughs. "Good one." They're sitting on their small porch in the summer heat, and Joe feels a lot older than his twenty years. But since it's a good feeling, he doesn't mind. At twenty, feeling older is good. At forty, not so much.  
"I'm not joking. Your Uncle Bob is helping her move in tomorrow."  
"No way," Joe says, eyes wide. "No way," he repeats again for good measure, and when Mina doesn't say anything in response, he gets up, storms inside, and hollers "NO WAY" into the phone.

Predictably, all of his protest is to no avail, and Uncle Bob and Una carry box after box into the house the very next day.

* * *

Una adds her timetable to the fridge, and joins them for their meals. She sneaks into Mina's room when the other girl is out and feeds Legolas nuts and hamster treats. Joe shouts at her at least once a day, and Mina soon learns not to mediate between the siblings. Once August rolls around, a tentative truce is agreed upon. Below the schedules on the fridge, the Spongebob magnets now hold a handwritten treaty. The first rule is: "No running to Ma."

Una and Mina take to painting each other toenails out on the porch, and Joe tries to not roll his eyes so much. One good thing about his sister moving in is that she nags Mina to be cleaner. Una is the tidiest person in the world, which stems from a childhood of being extremely untidy. Their mother had needled her so much that at one point, Una had realised that being tidy was better than being nagged, and she now happily applies the same principle to Mina. Joe is quite chuffed that he no longer has to pluck worn women's undies from below the couch while watching Criminal Intent.

* * *

Between his house of crazy women, college, and work, Joe has little to no free time. That also means that his Skype and WoW sessions with Zach are now few and far between. He kind of hates that, and he thinks that Zach does too, so when he comes home one morning, he pauses at the door, and instead sits down on the porch. The summer sunshine is already hot, glaring down on him, warming the back of his head. It feels nice. He sits there and thinks, remembers how he and Zach used to play football on the street, how they hid from the insane summer heat in the clearing in the woods. Something in Joe's head clicks, and now he's just waiting for Mina to come out to head to work. She does, not even fifteen minutes later.

If she's surprised to find him sitting there, next to the blooming rhododendron and on the stairs, she doesn't show it. "You missed breakfast."  
He nods and stares at his shoes. He's never really moved away, but the way he feels now is what he imagines homesickness to feel like. He is homesick for his best friend. "Mina, can I borrow your car for the next couple of days?"

To her credit, she only complains a little before handing him the keys. By the time Una gets up, the house is empty, and her brother and her friend are gone. The alphabet magnets on the fridge boldly proclaim: GONE 2 ZACH. Una nods to herself and sleepily goes to make herself some iced coffee.

* * *

Yale is many things. It's prestigious, expensive, and sure, the architecture is quite impressive. Above all, it is big. Joe actually has to go and get himself a map of the campus before he is able to locate Branford College, and within that, room 3b. He knocks at the door, and realises just as he is standing there with his hand hammering against the thin wood that he is more than a little smelly after the monumental journey from Colorado to Connecticut right smack in the middle of August.

He drove all day, all night, almost without pause, in a car with no air-conditioning, and now it's seven-thirty in the morning, and that means that the chances of Zach being anywhere other than his bed are slim. Zach always says that geniuses can only be geniuses when they get enough sleep. Zach's mother never believed that and kicked her son out of bed at six-thirty every morning save Sundays. On Sundays, Zach got to sleep an hour later. So did Joe because the first thing Zach did after being woken, taking a leak, a shower and brushing his teeth was to walk across the street and pound on his best friend's bedroom window.

So when he knocks on Zach's door, sweat still running down his back, it feels a bit like karmic retribution, and smelly or not, he's grinning from ear to ear. The door opens a few minutes later, and Joe finds himself face to face with his bed-headed, sleep befuddled best friend.

"Wanna play a round of Mario Kart?"  
And then slowly, Zach grins, and they do.

* * *

*** **The End*****


	3. Stage Fright

**Stage (Fright)**

* * *

_"Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined."_

~ Toni Morrison, _Beloved_

* * *

Joe and Mina are sitting on their ratty old couch, and all around them, chaos reigns. There is a book bag on the floor, vomiting its content on the pink and purple flower rug, and a number of dirty dishes all around it. Plus, of course, the predictable dirty underwear of Mina's.  
"When's Una coming back?" Mina asks while flipping through the channels.  
Uttering words he would never have believed possible, Joe takes the remote from his flatmate.  
"Can't be soon enough."  
Una had gone on a cruise with Grandpa and Grandma Wilson. They had invited her this year, and promised to take Joe next year. Personally, Joe's totally fine with not going on a cruise with lots of old people, but Una'll llike it. She'd finally be around people who don't mind her constant chatter. The downside is that without his baby sister around, Mina has reverted back to her sloppy self. Right now, she is removing her nail polish and he is sure that she won't toss the red-stained cotton balls into the trash but leave them right there on their brand new, $5 coffee table from IKEA until the dog eats them. Robbie the Pekingese sure is stupid enough.

They'd driven to Centennial just last week. 78 miles, the gas money by far outweighing their budget, but they'd gotten some gift vouchers from Joe's parents for their one-year housemate anniversary. Mina had even cried a little as she thanked Joe's ma, and once again Joe had wondered why her own parents never called or wrote or cared. His father too had noticed, and had pulled him aside, slipping him another ten bucks so that Joe could buy Mina some wonky Swedish cake. He'd done so, and Mina had rewarded him by not picking four pink mugs, but only two, allowing him to choose the colour for the others. He'd picked a blue and a green one (the latter being for Zach when he comes to visit).

"Hey, there is a student production of- damn, I forgot which play. Something Shakespeare. Do you want to go?" He casts her a sideways look. Mina loves going to the movies, and she has all sorts of DVDs. The DiCaprio _Romeo and Juliet_ is basically on permanent repeat, so he figures this must be right up her alley.  
But her face closes off and Joe can't help feeling like he just fucked up. Big time.  
"So you don't want to? Hey, fine by me. I'm not too keen on watching English majors strut around the stage wearing tights and speaking gibberish."  
"Shakespeare is not gibberish!" Mina exclaims and gets up.  
"Where are you going?"  
"To bed," she replies with finality, and struts out, leaving the cotton balls - just as Joe knew she would - on the table. He sighs and picks them up just as she slams her bedroom door upstairs.

* * *

The student production is Hamlet, and Mina has been eyeing the posters all week, not that she'd tell Joe. Throwing herself backwards on her bed, she has to fight the urge to cry. Instead, she wipes at her eyes, the coconut smell of her nail polish remover wafting to her nose. A little chemical, but better than the straight-up acetone smell most other removers have. She bought a bottle for Una too, a little welcome home gift for when she gets back.

Una would go to the play too, Mina thinks, and unlike Joe, she would pester Mina to come with until she gave in. Joe is more respectful of her boundaries and every time she pushes him away when he tries to do something nice, she feels like shit. But she can't go and watch Hamlet. She can't. Too many memories, and not all of them bad, which makes it even harder.

"Say you? Nay, pray you, mark. He is dead and gone, lady. He is dead and gone. At his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone," Mina murmurs, reciting the lines from memory. She'd been Ophelia once, for a few glorious nights.

Remembering the roses, the blinding stage lights and the cheer, she smiles for just a second, before she remembers everything that followed.

And then, in her bedroom upstairs, with Joe and all her pets downstairs, Mina begins to cry.

* * *

"Mina, Mina, have you heard? David Morton will be directing Hamlet here and he is using an all-student cast!"  
Mina sits up, entangling herself from her boyfriend's embrace. They are outside in the sunshine, sitting against a tree, removed from the usual hustle and bustle of campus on a weekday.  
"The David Morton? The Broadway director?"  
Elizabeth nods, her red curls bobbing. Mina squees, and flings herself in her friend's arms. The two girls jump up and down on the spot for a solid minute before Ryan clears his throat.  
"Girls, you're embarrassing yourselves." They turn to him, but the smile on his face belies his scolding. "So babe, you still coming to the game with me tonight or are you going to be brushing up on your Shakespeare?"  
Mina beams at him. Here she is, 19 years old, second year of college, with a wonderful and understanding boyfriend, sun shining on her head, her best friend's hand in her own, and a student production of _Hamlet_ ahead of her. She has to be Ophelia, she just has to. "Shakespeare," she says with conviction and bends down to give him a kiss. It feels as if right now, her future has finally begun.

* * *

She always wanted to be an actress. As a child, she put on plays in her mother's living-room, re-enactments of the fairytales she loved so much. As a teenager, Mina Harris was in every school production, center stage and ready. When her parents divorced, it was reading A Streetcar Named Desire that kept her sane, even as she was called to court to testify on her father's infidelity and her mother's drinking. One day, Mina knew, hoped and prayed, she would play Blanche DuBois on Broadway, earning rave reviews, winning the hearts of audience and critics alike.

But her parents insisted she'd go to college, and a good one at that. They wanted Harvard, she wanted Broadway, and after long negotiations, Brown was reached as a compromise. Mina chose drama as her major and finance as her minor (a small effort to placate her father) and then she packed her stuff and moved from Darien, Connecticut into her dorm at Brown. Mina struck gold with her roommate: Elizabeth Barrows was a drama major too, liked pink and purple and boys and candy and long movie marathons, and the two had been inseparable from the first minute. Thirty minutes into their friendship, they walked across campus with their arms linked, giggling and gossiping and trying to find the computer center.

Two weeks into her first semester, she met Ryan in the dining hall. He was nice, liked his parents, came from a good family, and knew how to pull open a door for a girl. She went to his Lacrosse plays, he went to her drama recitals, and Mina found herself happy, were it not for the feeling that she ought to be somewhere else. Her ambition was burning a hole in her heart, and while college was enjoyable (the right mixture of challenging and fun), Mina longed to be on a stage. She wanted to play all the great roles, the Ophelia, the Desdemona, the Blanche, the Maggie, the Madame Lyubov, the Gretchen. The Juliet and the Lady Macbeth. She wanted to make people forget her real age, convince them that she could be anyone. She wanted more than her world held now, and Elizabeth felt the same.

The girls dreamed of what could be, imagining themselves on the big stage, acting, accepting awards, wearing gowns, living the dream.

And then David Morton came along.

* * *

Elizabeth and Mina are sitting outside the assembly hall in which the audition has taken place. Both girls are already done, but they don't want to go home, not just yet. They want to watch how everyone leaves their auditions, see who they can rule out already. There are plenty of competitors and Mina knows she wasn't at her best today. She choked, right in her first line, and David Morton, _the_David Morton, had to prompt her. The rest went okay, but first impressions count, and hers wasn't... well, it just wasn't.

"I think I did well," Elizabeth says, giddy with excitement. She did not choke. She brought the director's assistant to tears, a feat Mina hadn't managed.  
"I'm sure you did," Mina answers on auto-pilot.  
"It has to be either your or me," Elizabeth continues, "the others aren't as good as us." She falls silent, and eyeballs Mina. "Of course, you look more like Ophelia than I do." Elizabeth reaches over and touches Mina's long blond hair. "If we were equally good, then that might tip the scales."  
"Liz, we weren't. I choked, I messed up the first line."  
Just then, the door opens and girl hurries out, hugging herself, obviously trying very hard not to cry.  
"One more down," Elizabeth mutters before turning her attention back to Mina. "It can't have been that bad," she says, but Mina knows that it was, and so does Elizabeth. She is just trying to be a friend. But even as good a friend and actress as Elizabeth is, she can't hide the glimmer of hope and relief in her eyes.

Mina is out of the running, and both girls know it.

* * *

Elizabeth has gone to call her parents, Ryan is at practice, and Mina is wandering the campus alone. The sun is setting, and a breeze is tugging at her hair and pink scarf. Her future was always so certain. Finish high school with a really good grade, go to college, and then take the theater world by storm. Never had she imagined that she would fall short of her own expectations. But when she had walked onto the stage tonight, the weight of this audition had pressed down on her, like a wave crashing over her head. It had been just one moment, but she'd lost her footing and had needed help to regain it. But surely, that can't be it, right? One messed up shot, and she is out of the running? It makes her feel that like Ophelia, she is going to go crazy. But unlike Ophelia, she can get out of this, she can turn it around, use her agony for something good. The fear, she knows, would inform her performance, give it an edge, make it irresistible. She can be more than another rich girl from a broken home.

She knows that she needs another chance to prove herself to David Morton. One more minute on the stage, as Ophelia. She can nail it. She is the best. She wants it the most. She wants it more than Liz.

The question is, Mina thinks, where she can find a moment to shine.

* * *

The university has a guesthouse for visiting lecturers. It's on the other side of campus and the director's assistant, the small square woman Elizabeth had reduced to tears with her performance, had told Mina - albeit reluctantly - that David Morton was staying in apartment 5b.

Without delay, Mina makes her way over there. She can't wait, or she might lose the nerve to impose herself on the famous director after her botched audition. She knocks on the door, slightly out of breath, her hair a mess because of the wind, and her heart hammering in her chest.

The door is pulled open and reveals Morton, a wine glass in his hand. He frowns. "Miss- Harris, I believe?"  
Mina nods, perhaps too vigorously. Everything depends on this moment, and the desperation makes her bold. "I need to audition again, Mister Morton. Please."  
"The stage does not offer second chances," he replies slowly, taking in the image of the windswept beauty in front of him. He had had high hopes for her when she walked onto the stage, but she had faltered. Even so, her performance had been fantastic, bested only by the girl that auditioned after her.  
"Please," Mina pleads and he can just see her in a loose white gown, carried onto the stage with lilies in that long hair. Elizabeth Barrows had been good, self-assured and confident, and his assistant was convinced that she was the perfect Ophelia. But the role required a vulnerability that Barrows didn't have. Ophelia is pain and innocence and so is the tortured girl in front of him, who came to his apartment in the evening, trying so very hard to keep her hands from shaking.

He pulls the door open and steps aside. "Come on in, then."

* * *

"Congratulations, babe!" Ryan shouts and picks her up, twirling them on the spot. Mina laughs, exhilarated. She's Ophelia! She still can't believe it, but it's her name on the bulletin board. Elizabeth's name is pencilled in underneath her own; she's the understudy.

"Yes, congratulations," Elizabeth says slowly when Ryan sets Mina down again before she visibly shakes herself. "I mean- this is great, Mina, you will be wonderful." Mina leans into Elizabeth's hug and hopes that they'll be okay. When the two girls break apart, and she sees the proud and happy look on Liz's face, she knows they will.

* * *

Weeks and weeks of rehearsal have led to this point. Mina stands behind stage, heart racing, Elizabeth holding her hand. It's opening night. "You'll be fine," her friend assures her and Mina nods, trying to believe her.

Then David appears. "Break a leg," he whispers into her ear, and nudges her on the stage.

* * *

The play is a success. There are theater critics from the regional papers, and even some from the Times, and Mina knows that she did good. No, she did better than good. She killed it tonight. Ryan too had been in the audience and is now talking to Elizabeth and the director's assistant in a corner. He tossed red roses on the stage for her.

The after-play party is in full swing. Mina is still in her Ophelia make-up, but she did change back into a normal dress. Beside her, David laughs and Mina focuses her attention back on him. He has given her the chance of a lifetime, and is just now telling the journalist about how she has a frailty that makes her special, how she is a natural on the stage, how her future will be bright and how he hopes that she will star in his next play on Broadway. That takes her breath away, and she turns to Ryan, wanting to call him over. He has to hear this!

But Ryan is already looking at her, and for the first time since they met, he doesn't do so lovingly. He is disgusted. Why is he disgusted? Mina's eyes flit over to Elizabeth, who too is staring at her, the assistant's arm wrapped around her thin shoulders. When their eyes meet, resolve flares up in Liz's face and she stalks over.

"You slept with him," she hisses, and David and the reporter fall silent.  
"What?" Mina asks, dumbfounded.  
Elizabeth jabs her finger in David's direction. "That's how you got the part. Mary-Anne told me how you asked for his address the evening of the flunked audition, how you begged her to give it to you. How could you, Mina? You stole the part from me!"  
David lifts his hand in a gesture of self-defense. "This is not what happened," he says, addressing the journalist. Mina blinks. She wants to explain to Elizabeth that Mary-Anne got it all wrong, but the words don't come to her because that's when Ryan leaves.

He doesn't look back.

* * *

Everything changes from thereon out. Elizabeth doesn't talk to her and it cuts deep. Their dormroom is as silent as a grave. If Mina had anywhere else to go, she would have been long gone. Elizabeth, whose family is from Iowa, would have surely done the same. But instead, they are stuck in their small dorm room, with the two pink and purple flower print carpets they bought together, with their mutually owned DVD collection, and the history of their friendship. Mina tried to explain, but Elizabeth didn't believe her. The hardest part is that she can't blame her. Mina did call the assistant, did ask for David's address, did go to the apartment, did knock on the door, did go in, and did get the part. She didn't sleep with him, but who would believe that when her first audition was a bust and she only got the part after she'd been alone with the director?

Ryan doesn't take her calls. Mina thinks that this is bad, but at least she can still play Ophelia. As long as she is on the stage, she feels whole, invincible. But the second the applause dies down and her world goes silent again, she forgets how to cope. She fails her History of Theater exam.

And then the story spreads and everyone knows. And where it used to be only her roommate and her boyfriend giving her the silent treatment, now the rest of the campus does too. Nobody talks to her, but everybody has something to say about her. Sometimes, they wait until she is out of earshot. Most of the time, they don't.

Slut.  
Hooker.  
Whore.

In one week, she hears it all.  
So does David Morton. The university sends him packing, the production closes down. They call her father.

* * *

"You will have to transfer," her father says. He didn't come to Brown for the play's opening night, but he did come to have a talk with her. He is sitting in her desk chair, while Mina is perched on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. The tears on her cheeks have not yet dried.  
"Daddy..," she whispers, but he makes an impatient hand gesture. "I don't have to tell you how disappointed I am. I was always happy to indulge your hobby, Mina, but I expected you to know better. To sleep with your director... I am very ashamed. You better hope my friends and colleagues don't hear about this."  
"But Daddy, I didn't-"  
"Mina, stop." His voice is severe and she falls silent.  
"Do you think this will land in the papers?"  
She shrugs, feeling helpless and small.  
"Well, I can make a donation to the school, that should make this go away. No blemish on your record. As long as you stay off the stage, naturally. Which college do you want to transfer to?"  
She doesn't want to transfer at all. She wants her friends back. She wants Ryan back. She wants to be able to walk down a hall without people whispering about her. She wants to get on the stage and play all the great roles.

She chokes, and her father leaves.  
He hasn't hugged her once.

* * *

There are two more months until the semester is over. Ryan slams the door in her face five times before Mina gives up for good. Elizabeth puts a box of condoms on Mina's bookshelves, resting on her Complete Shakespeare. Other than that, the silent treatment continues. When there is groupwork in class, Mina sits alone until the lecturer forces some group to take her in. All of her ideas are shot down. When she sits down at a table in the dining hall, people get up and leave.

Mina is supposed to spend the summer with her mother, but a phone call from her aunt Lois alerts her to the fact that her mother is in rehab, and all summer plans are cancelled. Going to her father and his new wife is not an option - he doesn't even take her calls, but does send her a weekly email to ask which university she will transfer to in the fall.

One night, Mina comes home to her dorm to find Elizabeth, Ryan, and a small group of her friends in her room. They are laughing, watching a movie. Everyone falls silent when Mina enters. She notices Elizabeth is sitting next to Ryan, his arm casually draped over the pillows she is resting against.

"Hi," Mina murmurs and walks over to her bed. She drops her bag, conscious of all the eyes on her. She thought Elizabeth would be alone: this is the first time since the opening night that they have visitors, that Elizabeth has stayed here to meet people rather than go out.

Elizabeth glares at her.  
Mina teeters on the spot. This is her room, she has every right to be here, she hasn't done anything wrong, in fact, she hasn't done anything at all, but five sets of angry eyes on her make her want to run for the door.

"Umm, what are you guys watching?"  
Elizabeth gets to her feet and walks over to her. Mina notices that she's wearing new earrings. They are pretty. Normally, she would tell her, ask where she bought them, and then they'd giggle and plan their next shopping trip. Mina hasn't been shopping since before the play. It's no fun going alone.  
"Mina, you leave or we leave. Which one is it?"  
Mina looks over Elizabeth's shoulder, where everyone is draped over the narrow bed. There is a bowl of popcorn, some red vines (Ryan really likes them, she knows) and a stack of DVDs. They are having fun. They seem so normal. Three months ago, she would have been among them, curled up against Ryan, ankles entwined with Elizabeth, chatting with Rene, Michael and Isabel. But if she were to walk over now, they'd just get up.

She casts her eyes to the floor. "I'll go."  
Leaving her bag where it is, she just takes her laptop computer.

Three hours later, she has twenty-nine tabs open, each one for a different college. None are within a driving distance, none are on the east coast, and none are Ivy.

* * *

She emails her dad.  
"Colorado State."  
He responds by mailing her the admission form.

* * *

One more month of classes. Mina now lives in the library. She's there all day, every day. She only goes to her dorm to sleep. She showers in the gym at six in the morning, when it's still empty. She eats lunch at 11.30 like an old person, just to make sure she is more or less alone in the dining room. She still doesn't know where to go for the summer holidays.

* * *

Ryan and Elizabeth begin dating. People tell Mina about it at any opportunity, trying to gauge her reaction. After the complete silence, the mock sincerity and caring almost feel good.

Almost.

When she walks in on Elizabeth and Ryan in her room, Mina calls her father and asks him to give her money so that she can move somewhere else.

"You need to deal with this like a grown-up, Mina," he tells her. "You can't make mistakes like this and expect them to have no consequences."

For the first time, Mina feels anger instead of desperation. She drives out to the next car dealership and without hesitating, sells the lime green Volkswagen Beetle convertible her father gave her as a high school graduation present.

She spends the rest of the month in a dingy flat off-campus. She has three flatmates and the bathroom is moldy. The fridge is broken. She sleeps on a mattress on the floor, not wanting to spend money on getting furniture. At some point, Mina can't stand the bleakness and loneliness anymore, so she takes the bus to the pet shelter.

"I want the pet that no one wants," Mina says to the admin person there.  
"Looks like Artie will finally find a new home then," he mutters and leads her down a corridor to a hissing cat. The fur is an indistinguishable color. "He won't let us wash him," he says by way of apology. Taking in Mina's book bag, her neat ponytail, her pink nail polish, he sighs. He can't have this pretty girl loaded up with the demon cat from hell. "Listen, we've got a nicer pet that people aren't too keen on either. He's kind of ugly, but a sweet little guy. How do you feel about dogs?"  
"I'll take him," Mina replies, her eyes still on the hissing cat in its cage. "But I want the cat too."

* * *

Her arms are covered in scratches. Naturally, everyone believes she is a cutter now. But just like nobody would give her the time of day to explain that she hadn't touched David Morton, nobody is willing to listen to her tales about Artie the angry cat.

She gets called into her advisor's office and leaves it with a stash of leaflets. Self-help groups: drugs, cutting, mental illness. The whole lot. Mina tosses them in the next trash can and walks back home to her off-campus flat in the light summer rain.

By the time her father finally returns her call, she is packing up her few belongings. She has some of the car sale money still saved up; it will buy her a new vehicle when she gets to Colorado.

"Mina, have you given any thought where you will spend the summer?"  
No word about her really good grades, about her change of address, about the pictures of Artie (who is now white and clean) and Robbie (who is still ugly). All that news she had relayed by email, but he doesn't care. Never has.  
"I wanted to go mom's, but she's in rehab."  
"Then I don't see why you can't stay in her house. It's empty anyway."  
She doesn't reply, and he sighs into the receiver. "How much money will you need in Colorado?"  
"Can you put up the tuition?" she asks in a small voice.  
"Of course."  
"Thanks." She takes a deep breath. "Then I don't need anything else. I'll get a job." She has never had a job, but she won't depend on him anymore. She's done.  
"Fine. Call me if you need anything."  
She hangs up.

* * *

It's the last day of classes. If her life would be like the rom coms she and Elizabeth used to watch, she'd now bump into Ryan somewhere and they would exchange forgiving looks while moving forward with their lives only to be reunited before she moves all the way to Fort Collins, Colorado. There'd be regret and apologies and love and make-up kisses and Elizabeth would burst in and realise everything has been a mistake and could they please be friends again?

Instead, the day passes with the normal whispers, the jeers, and Mina still walks around with an imaginary scarlet letter on her back. She doesn't participate in the end of term discussions many lecturers hold.

What I liked about this semester: being Ophelia. Being normal. Having friends.  
What I didn't like about this semester: losing everything.  
Suggestions for academic improvement: start over somewhere else.

* * *

Joe knocks on her door and opens it without her calling him in.  
"I don't like Shakespeare," he mutters and offers her a plate. It holds a soggy sandwich.  
She accepts it and indicates the space next to her on the bed. He walks in, almost timid, and sits down. He normally doesn't hang out in Mina's room. His ma impressed on him that if he wants to live with a girl, then he has to respect her space. She always needs to feel safe around you, Joseph, his mother had said and wagged her finger. Joe knows his ma is right, but he also knows that whenever Una was in a funk, his mother brought her food and made sure she really ate it.

"I like Shakespeare," Mina says softly before taking a bite. It feels like swallowing brick, which has nothing to do with Joe's sandwich and everything to do with Shakespeare, but she eats it anyway.  
"We can do something else," he suggests and awkwardly pats her head. "Zach and I want to play WoW later tonight. Una likes it too, she says it's colorful. If Una likes it, you might too."  
Mina, who has seen her share of WoW and only really likes the commercials for the game, smiles and shakes her head. She is almost not crying anymore.

"Thanks, Joe," she says and leans over, placing a kiss on his cheek. Joe immediately takes on a deep red hue. "Yeah, whatever. It's only a sandwich. I have to set up the computer now." Shooting her a lopsided grin (that goes very nicely with his blush), he leaves the room, shooing Artie and Robbie into it as he goes.  
"Here are the beasts," he calls to her and then closes the door.

* * *

She goes to see the play, alone.  
She didn't tell Joe. Too many explanations, too many old wounds where the scabs have barely healed.

When she leaves the theater, nobody spares her a second glance. But nobody calls her a whore, and nobody questions her right to be there.

This Ophelia wasn't as good as she had been.

Mina cries at the end anyway.

* * *

*** **The End *****


End file.
